Catherine and Jean wander all by themselves through the fields. Their mother is a farmer’s wife and is at work at home. They have no nurse-maid to take them, and they don’t need one. They know their way, and all the woods and fields and hills. Catherine can tell the time by looking at the sun, and she has guessed all sorts of pretty secrets of Nature that town-bred children have no suspicion of. Little Jean himself understands a great many things about the woods, the pools, and the mountains, for his little soul is a country soul.

Catherine and Jean go roaming through the flowery meadows. As they go, Catherine gathers a nosegay. She picks blue centauries, scarlet² poppies, cuckoo-flowers, and buttercups, which she also knows as little chicks. She picks those pretty purple blossoms that grow in hedgerows and are called Venus’ looking-glasses. She picks the dark ears of the milkwort, and crane’s-bill and lily of the valley, whose tiny white bells shed a delicious perfume at the least puff³ of wind. Catherine loves flowers because they are beautiful; and she loves them too because they make such pretty ornaments⁴. She is very simply dressed, and her pretty hair is hid under a brown linen⁵ cap. She wears a cotton check pinafore over her plain frock, and goes in wooden shoes. She has never seen rich dresses except on the Virgin⁶ Mary and the St. Catherine in the parish church. But there are some things little girls know directly they are born. Catherine knows that flowers are becoming to wear, and that pretty ladies who pin nosegays in their bosoms⁷ look lovelier than ever. So she has a notion she must be very fine indeed now, carrying a nosegay bigger than her own head. Her thoughts are as bright and

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